Solsbury Hill and the Bath Curse Tablets

The name, "Solsbury", may be derived from the Celtic god Sulis, a deity worshipped at the thermal spring in nearby Bath.

In localised Celtic polytheism practised in Britain, Sulis was a deity worshipped at the thermal spring of Bath (now in Somerset). She was worshipped by the Romano-British as Sulis Minerva, whose votive objects and inscribed lead tablets suggest that she was conceived of both as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess, and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries.

The exact meaning of the name Sulis is still a matter of debate among linguists, but one possibility is "Eye/Vision", cognate with Old Irish súil "eye, gap", perhaps derived from a Proto-Celtic word *sūli- which may be related to various Indo-European words for "sun" (cf. Homeric Greek ηέλιος, Sanskrit sūryah "sun", from Proto-Indo-European *suh2lio-).

Sulis was the local goddess of the thermal springs that still feed the spa baths at Bath, which the Romans called Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis"). Her name primarily appears on inscriptions discovered at Bath, with only a single instance outside of Britain at Alzey, Germany. This is not surprising, as Celtic deities often preserved their archaic localisation. They remained to the end associated with a specific place, often a cleft in the earth, a spring, pool or well. The Greeks referred to the similarly local pre-Hellenic deities in the local epithets that they assigned, associated with the cult of their Olympian pantheon at certain places (Zeus Molossos only at Dodona, for example). The Romans tended to lose sight of these specific locations, except in a few Etruscan cult inheritances and ideas like the genius loci, the guardian spirit of a place.

The gilt bronze cult statue of Sulis Minerva "appears to have been deliberately damaged" sometime in later Antiquity, perhaps by barbarian raiders, Christian zealots, or some other forces.

About 130 curse tablets, mostly addressed to Sulis, have been found in the sacred spring at the Roman baths in Bath. Typically, the text on the tablets offered to Sulis relates to theft; for example, of small amounts of money or clothing from the bath-house. It is evident, from the localized style of Latin ("British Latin") used, that a high proportion of the tablets came from the native population. In formulaic, often legalistic, language the tablets appeal to the deity, Sulis, to punish the known or unknown perpetrators of the crime until reparation be made. Sulis is typically requested to impair the physical and mental well-being of the perpetrator, by the denial of sleep, by causing normal bodily functions to cease or even by death. These afflictions are to cease only when the property is returned to the owner or disposed of as the owner wishes, often by its being dedicated to the deity. One message found on a tablet in the Temple at Bath (once decoded) reads: "Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds [sic] and eyes in the goddess' temple."

The tablets were often written in code, by means of letters or words being written backwards; word order may be reversed and lines may be written in alternating directions, from left to right and then right to left (boustrophedon). While most texts from Roman Britain are in Latin, two scripts found here, written on pewter sheets, are in an unknown language which may be Brythonic. They are the only examples of writing in this language ever found.

The Bath curse tablets are a collection of about 130 Roman era curse tablets (or defixiones in Latin) discovered in 1979/1980 in the English city of Bath. The tablets invoke the intercession of the goddess Sulis Minerva in the return of stolen goods and to curse the perpetrators of the thefts. Inscribed mostly in British Latin, they have been used to attest to the everyday spoken vernacular of the Romano-Britishpopulation of the second to fourth centuries A.D.

Discovery and description

Photograph of the Baths showing a rectangular area of greenish water surrounded by yellow stone buildings with pillars. In the background is the tower of the abbey. The Roman baths at Bath — the entire structure above the level of the pillar bases is post-Roman.

The Roman baths and temple dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva in the English city of Bath (founded by the Romans as Aquae Sulis) were excavated between 1978 and 1983 by a team led by Barry Cunliffe and Peter Davenport. In 1979/1980, around 130 tablets were discovered in an excavation of the "Sacred Spring" under the King's Bath. The spring had been temporarily diverted to facilitate the excavation, revealing a huge array of Roman era items including the tablets. The tablets, some in a fragmentary state, were small and rectangular and initially were assumed to be made of lead, although subsequent metallurgical analysis revealed that they are, in fact, made of lead alloyed with tin, with occasional traces of copper. Some of the tablets were cast under pressure into thin, flexible sheets with a finish as smooth as paper whereas others appear to have been roughly hammered out from a molten lump. Most of the tablets were inscribed, either with Roman capitals or with cursive script, but the expertise of the lettering varied. Some of the tablets had markings that appear to be an illiterate imitation of lettering, for example repetitive lines of crosses or sevens, and some were completely blank.

The tablets were put on display in the Roman Baths Museum in Bath, where they continue to be available to be viewed by the public. The inscriptions on the tablets were published in full in 1988 by historian Roger Tomlin.

The tablets were identified as “curse tablets” dating from the second to fourth centuries A.D. Curse tablets are small metal sheets inscribed with curses against specific people and were used in popular magic throughout the Roman world.

Most of the inscriptions are in colloquial Latin, and specifically in the Vulgar Latin of the Romano-British population, known as "British Latin". Two of the inscriptions are in a language which is not Latin, although use Roman lettering, and may be in a British Celtic language. If this should be the case, they would be the only examples of a written ancient British Celtic language; however, there is not yet scholarly consensus on their decipherment.

All but one of the 130 Bath curse tablets concern the restitution of stolen goods and are a type of curse tablet known as "prayers for justice". The complained of thefts are generally of personal possessions from the baths such as jewellery, gemstones, money, household goods and especially clothing. Theft from public baths appears to have been a common problem as it was a well-known Roman literary stereotype and severe laws existed to punish the perpetrators. Most of the depositors of the tablets (the victims of the thefts) appear to have been from the lower social classes.

The inscriptions generally follow the same formula, suggesting it was taken from a handbook: the stolen property is declared as having been transferred to a deity so that the loss becomes the deity’s loss; the suspect is named and, in 21 cases, so is the victim; the victim then asks the deity to visit afflictions on the thief (including death) not as a punishment but to induce the thief to hand the stolen items back. The deity whose help was invoked is Sulis, and the tablets were deposited by the victims in the spring that was sacred to her.

A typical example reads:

"Solinus to the goddess Sulis Minerva. I give to your divinity and majesty [my] bathing tunic and cloak. Do not allow sleep or health to him who has done me wrong, whether man or woman or whether slave or free unless he reveals himself and brings those goods to your temple." The formula "whether man or woman or whether slave or free" is typical, and the following example is unusual in two respects. Firstly it adds the words "whether pagan or Christian" and secondly the text was written in reversed lettering: "Whether pagan or Christian, whether man or woman, whether boy or girl, whether slave or free whoever has stolen from me, Annianus [son of] Matutina (?), six silver coins from my purse, you, Lady Goddess, are to exact [them] from him. If through some deceit he has given me...and do not give thus to him but reckon as (?) the blood of him who has invoked his upon me." Many name the suspected thieves: "I have given to the goddess Sulis the six silver coins which I have lost. It is for the goddess to exact [them] from the names written below: Senicianus and Saturninus and Anniola." Some of the inscriptions are very specific in the afflictions requested and reveal the intensity of the victim's anger: "Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds [sic] and eyes in the goddess' temple." "May he who carried off Vilbia from me become liquid as the water. May she who so obscenely devoured her become dumb" "...so long as someone, whether slave or free, keeps silent or knows anything about it, he may be accursed in (his) blood, and eyes and every limb and even have all (his) intestines quite eaten away if he has stolen the ring or been privy (to the theft)."

One of the suspected British Celtic inscriptions has been translated as: "The affixed – Deuina, Deieda, Andagin, (and) Uindiorix – I have bound" An alternative translation of the above inscription is: "May I, Windiorix for/at Cuamena defeat (alt. summon to justice) the worthless woman, oh divine Deieda.

The Bath curse tablets are the most important record of Romano-British religion yet published. Curse tablets are of particular use in evidencing the Vulgar Latin of everyday speech, and, since their publication in 1988, the Bath inscriptions have been used as evidence of the nature of British Latin. Additionally, the contents of the inscriptions have been used as evidence of popular attitudes to crime and the system of justice.